This child was born in 1820. He was one
of four children, the only boy. His father was one of the most famous inventors
in U.S. history, who had built a gun manufacturing center in New Haven,
Connecticut. New Haven was at that time poised on the edge of the Industrial
Revolution. The entrepreneurial spirit of the manufacturing community was
growing and energetic. Two of the child's uncles also were inventors and
entrepreneurs. Family members and friends owned businesses and factories.

But then, when the child was four years
old, his famous father died.

The child attended Yale University, and
then Princeton. Upon graduating, at age 21, he took over the armory where
his father once had made rifles. He retooled the armory, and began producing
different kinds of weapons. Then he put his education to use in developing
the business, branching out to the manufacture of handguns.

One of his biggest manufacturing coups
was joining forces with a man named Samuel Colt to produce a revolver Colt
had invented. To do so, he first had to invent and manufacture the machines
to produce the revolvers.

Over a period of years, the business grew,
and it became more sophisticated, applying the latest technology and business
theories. Over the same period of time, the population of the city of New
Haven also grew. Ultimately the child became a powerful and wealthy industrialist,
and a noted inventor himself, like his father and uncles. He also built a water works company for
the city, became influential in local and state politics as an early Republican, and was reknowned for his
generosity as a philanthropist.

Undoubtedly, you've heard all about the
remarkable inventor of the cotton gin. His only son inherited his talent for business
innovation and invention, and parlayed the material inheritance he received from
his father into America's industrial age, helping to build America's
future world superiority in arms manufacturing. Did he require his father's parenting in order to become an achiever? Or were his accomplishments the result of other factors...

* The term "fatherless"
is used in this series as it is in current research and policy rhetoric
by the U.S. federal government, DHHS and the National Fatherhood Initiative,
most U.S. states in connection with child custody law and policy, and various
family values and fatherhood interest policy and lobbying groups.

"...Just
add Dad, the magic ingredient. It's hard to know where wishful thinking
becomes deliberate deception. But this argument, advanced by the fathers'
rights movement, is like saying that, since Mercedes Benz owners make more
money than people who drive Hyundais, you will become wealthy if you buy
a Mercedes..." Mike
Peterson